


To Walk the Skies

by potofsoup



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Gen, mohawk indian au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-29
Updated: 2014-10-29
Packaged: 2018-02-23 02:34:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2530796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/potofsoup/pseuds/potofsoup
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU where Captain America is Captain Native America.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Walk the Skies

It's not that Steve wasn't afraid of death, it's just he's had so much experience with it.

When he was 5 and merely a kid in Kahnawake there was the winter when he was so sick that everyone around him thought he would die. But no one talked about it, and instead talked around and over their fears. So he learned to do the same -- joke about a spring that he wasn't sure he'd see. And when the spring did come, the illness had taken its toll. When he ran with the other boys, he felt like his body was betraying him at every step -- his breaths too short, his spine bent out of shape, half his hearing gone. But since no one talked about it, he just kept running and figured he'd either catch up or die trying. 

When he was 8, they moved to Brooklyn because his dad found a job walking the iron in New York, building skyscrapers for the bankers in Manhattan. That was when people started calling him Steve instead of his actual name, and he started going to school in the neighborhood. Steve's dad would come home from work with hands and legs shaking from walking a mile in the sky every day, but he didn't talk about it, and instead drank from the bottle until his hands steadied again. The construction manager hired Mohawks on the belief that they were biological anomalies who had no fear of heights, and keeping up the myth was important for all the other tribe members trying to eke out a living in Brooklyn.

A few years later, Steve's father passed, his hand still on a bottle. At the funeral ceremony back in Kahnawake, Steve thought about how those hands had finally stopped shaking, and that the fear of death was worse than death itself. By then their neighborhood in Brooklyn had enough Mohawks to be dubbed Little Caughnawaga, so instead of going back to Kahnawake, Steve's mother decided to stay and become a nurse. The people of the neighborhood came to her for her calm words and her mixture of traditional and modern remedies. They'd come with their aches and pains, faces tight with fear. But always, the silence. The talking around and over the fear. That's just what people did. His mother had ways of calming them without every talking about it. Then, one winter she caught a nasty disease from one of her patients, and suddenly it was Steve's turn to talk around and over the fear, making jokes with her about the coming spring while knowing it wasn't going to happen.

Steve went back to Kahnawake that spring, tired of New York, tired of Brooklyn. But there weren't any jobs in Kahnawake, so in the fall he found himself back in Brooklyn. Even though he was small and frail, he found an ironworker job easily, because everyone had done such a good job keeping the myth of the fearless Mohawk. And when Steve first stepped onto an iron bar 800 feet in the air, he found the myth to be true. Or rather, he wasn't any more afraid of death at 800 feet as he was on the ground -- falling to his death wasn't any different from all the other ways his body could betray him, and he had long conquered that. Besides, it's not like he had much to lose if he fell.

Then he met Bucky. James Buchanan Barnes, one of the few non-Mohawk workers on the crew. He cared about names: insisted on being called Bucky, and even took the time to learn everyone's Mohawk names. Always had a kind word and a charming smile. And, more importantly for Steve, he talked about his fears. Before meeting Bucky Steve didn't know it was possible, but Bucky talked about his fear of falling, his fear about his future, his fear about what was happening in Europe. So they'd sit high up in the air, eating lunch, Bucky in his impeccably pressed shirt, and just talk about everything. Sometimes they both forgot to be afraid.

Then came the war. Steve tried to enlist, but his body kept betraying him. Bucky got drafted to the 371st, though, and soon he was off. That's when they came with offer of the experiment. They weren't ready to test it on a "true-blooded American" yet, and Mohawks didn't fear anything anyway, right? Steve, eager to join the war, said yes. (And it wasn't like people would notice if he said no. He's known too many others being treated as government experiments to find cause to put up a fuss.)

He didn't realize how much the serum would change him, though. Not the enhanced physical and mental abilities part, but the Captain America part. When they realized that they'd lost the serum and they were stuck with Steve, the Senator cursed and wished they tried it on some Irish boy instead. "At least we would have gotten someone we could trot out for the troops." But they made it work. They made up a story about Red Star the fearless warrior from the plains who wrestled buffalo and punched Hitler, and marched Steve around the country doing shows. That's when Steve found a different sort of fear -- not fear of death, but the slow fading into nothingness as Captain America took on his life. Steve wished he could talk to Bucky about it, but instead he just did his best to talk around and over it, and make lots of jokes about Hitler. 

By the time he finally made it to Europe, he'd mostly forgotten what it was like to walk the sky, wheezing but fearless. Red Star had punched Hitler over 200 times and it was easier to be Captain America than be the scrawny Mohawk skywalker or the orphan sick boy. Then he heard about what happened to the 371st: Bucky's regiment.

They tried to convince him that it wasn't worth it to go after an all-black regiment, but Steve would have none of it. "I am Captain America," he said, "Are they not Americans?" Colonel Philips opened, then closed his mouth. That was when Steve realized that myths could be useful.

**Author's Note:**

> For more about Mohawk Ironworkers: [Smithsonian online exhibit](http://www.sites.si.edu/exhibitions/exhibits/archived_exhibitions/booming/main.htm), [other article that’s pretty thorough](http://web22.thehistorychannelclub.com/articles/articletype/articleview/articleid/296/the-mohawks-who-built-manhattan). (I totally stole Steve’s name from the Smithsonian exhibit). (And yes, there was totally a Mohawk community in Brooklyn from the 1920s-70s.)
> 
> find me on [tumblr](http://potofsoup.tumblr.com)
> 
> EDIT: I removed mention of Steve's Mohawk name, because someone very helpfully pointed out that names are sacred and unique. Thanks!!


End file.
